Part 13

The Last Mistake

by William (Blue) Berry

“You were among the first to see alien video,” JMcC said.

“I thought it was a fake,” I said.

“Being skeptical was obviously your cover”, he said.

“Did it occur to you that I might be skeptical because I am skeptical,” I said.

“Mulder needs a Scully,” he said.

“I don’t have her, um, eyes,” I said. I had to think fast. They’re paranoid. If I am one of “they” then their hacking will inconvenience me. I can’t pretend to be a UFO paranoid. There are no neutrals in their eyes. Then I struck it. I’d introduce them to the “real” conspiracy, but on a cordless phone in my basement wasn’t going to cut it. “Listen, can we talk in a place with lots of witnesses?”

“I’d rather we talked in private. Is it all clear, dude?” Then a distant voice said, “Yeah, the van is secure.”

“The first place to look for something hidden is where you can not see. You guys like Chinese?” I gave them directions and told them to meet me there in half an hour. I hung up and was about to ask Mrs. Phelps to check the mail or something so I could sneak out but I saw the van leave.

The New York Buffet is an all you can eat Chinese buffet. (After two platefuls an angry person tells you that is all you can eat.) I like the green beans. It is public so we could be ignored (besides the waitresses don’t speak good English anyway.)

I asked for a table for three. The Maitre D’ (does the guy at a Chinese restaurant get called that?) said, “Three? You buffet and diet coke alone man. You three?”

“Yes.” I assured him, “I Three.”

He led me to the window. I remembered the Soviet Union being able to detect the vibrations on windows, so places like the Pentagon had music piped onto the windows. If I knew this my guests would. “No,” I said pointing to another table, “that one.” The Maitre D called a waitress and they spoke quickly in a foreign language I assumed was Chinese and he left. After she asked “You three?” she left three place settings.

Right on schedule J McC and Dood arrived.

Can you buy?” I asked. “I’m a little short.”

“No problemo” said the short one as he pulled out a gold Master Card made out to I. M. Abutheed. I did not recognize J McC’s voice.

“Cool, Dood,” I said.

“Why are we here?” asked J McC. I could tell he was dripping with suspicion.

“The best way to keep a secret is to not let anyone know you are keeping a secret,” I said. “A non-chalant naked guy has a better chance of going unnoticed on a nude beach than the guys in a suit of armor. That, and I like Chinese.” They ignored the joke. I decided to plow ahead anyway. “If you are serious, the van was a mistake, but ditching it now let’s on that you know the truth. Those government agents you hear about? If they were seriously concerned they could just kill you and access everything from inside the van.”

“We have guns,” said Dood.

“So?” I asked. “Can you take out a platoon?”

We got dinner. Dood liked egg rolls. J McC went for white rice and green beans.

I continued, “I’m going to give a vague outline. Frankly I don’t want to know more than that because secrets are dangerous things. By the way, everything you know should become common knowledge as fast as you can shout it from the rooftops. That way killing you won’t plug the leak but will look like a cover up. Oh, that only works once before they figure you’d learn things you’re not supposed to and kill you anyway.”

“Are you saying we are dead men for contacting you?” asked J McC.

“Maybe not, but the comatose tell no tales either,” I said, and then waited a beat before I smiled.

“Anyway that whole aliens bit is a an open conspiracy to provide cover for the real conspiracy.” This is the point where the speaker gets knifed in the back or something. It is hard to think that and not look over your shoulder. I like to say I succeeded, but I don’t want to lie. Flop sweat poured out of my brow. Either it was flop sweat or the Kung Pau chicken was extra spicy. “The United States has been at war for about 65 years depending on whether you count Lend/Lease etc. Many things get committed in the name of ‘security’.”

“To defeat a foe,” I said, “you must become like him. Think of our foes. Nazi Germany. The USSR. We are freer than they were, but if you go back sixty years we were freer than we are today.”

“That’s ****, man,” said Dood. “We traveled across the country and no one stopped us. Our freedom of movement was not impinged.”

I decided to remember Dude was smarter than the stereotype. “If you were in Nazi Germany and a police officer stopped you what would he do?” I asked.

“He’d ask to see our papers,” said Dood.

“So would a state trooper, but he’d call them a license and registration. Were the people in Nazi Germany free to travel?”

“Nice try,” said J Mc C, “but the papers told where you came from and where you belonged.”

“Look at your license. It has your address. If it is an out of state license the state trooper will casually ask, ‘What brings you to Massachusetts?’”

They thought. I chewed. I sometimes frighten myself with that comparison. I decided to give myself a good scare. “In 1992 the Berlin wall came down and the Soviet Union fell. The cruelest thing you can do to somebody is to rob them of an enemy. The United States tried other enemies, like Iraq and international terrorism, but it wasn’t the same. The aliens if they were real are very conveniently timed.”

“So why don’t you think they are real?” asked J McC.

“So you say the aliens are just boogey men to scare the children into behaving?” asked Dood.

Dood was hooked. J McC needed more. I let Dood stew in it, and answered J.

“Same reason I know the moon landing was faked. I can see.” J knew what I was referring too, but Dood did not. I turned to Dood, “the crater was too shallow underneath the Eagle,” I turned towards J, “and the Lobster guy could not have evolved in a gravity well, and what he wants is totally illogical. Valid economical reasons for slavery ended with the invention of horse collars. Any technological civilization is going to be able to come up with a cheaper way than up keeping slaves to do whatever needs to be done.”

Silence, they were going to let me talk. J, if not hooked completely at least took me for another paranoid not one of “them”.

I left before them. The guy in a blue Yankees sweater left right after me. I realized he must be the open tail or they were really inept, whoever “they” were. I non-chalantly got in my car and drove to Building #19. The open tail almost lost me at the railroad tracks and I had to slow down for him. I parked, kept note of my surroundings and picked up toothpaste labeled in Spanish as I thought. If he was an open tail I’ll have to make him to flush out the real tail. The Yankees sweater came in. I went up to him and said, “I’ll just be going home now, unless you want to follow me to a strip club.”

He said, “ab, ah, the, um, who are you?”

I didn’t reply. I went to the checkouts and left. The Yankee fan didn’t follow. In the car I rabbitted to the dump and did a bootleg turn and raced home. I noticed no one. I was safe.


Berry got home and noticed the street was ominously quiet. Birds in the jungle can sense Tigers, and drug dealers can sense cops. A human can trigger the bird’s silence even if he isn’t stalking anything. A Fed can trigger the drug dealer’s silence as well. Berry noticed the silence and was unnerved by it, but think of why it was silent.

A stout man with an umbrella walked up to him and said, “William Berry?”

Berry didn’t understand. He thought it was another process server. He knew from experience not to run. The struggle is in court against a lawyer, not here against a process server. “Yeah, you can notarize my signature and I can save you a buck by notarizing yours” he said.

A black Lexus was coming up Weld Street. He’d seen that car around. Besides Mrs. Phelps would be paying attention to everyone else’s business. Witnesses were everywhere. Berry relaxed.

“I’m not a notary,” said the stout man as he pulled a gun with a silencer from the umbrella.

Everyone is entitled to a mistake; Berry didn’t shut down the computer fast enough when Satan’s Helper was IMing him. Now he made his second mistake.

If someone pulls a gun on you the initial reaction is to run. The initial reaction, as all good chess players know, is often wrong. Increasing the range does nothing against a projectile weapon. Decreasing the range gives the unarmed person a fighting chance.

Berry saw the eyes widen on the red head behind the wheel of the Lexus. Nice eyes even if they are as red as her hair, he thought. How do I look? Oh man, I’ve got a red stain on my shirt. Then he was in too much pain to think coherently. Then the pain went away.


General Eberhart was angry.

He stared at the maps on his desk. Or rather he stared through them. His coffee was ignored and cold.

The Blackbird pilots saw nothing. NSA insisted the enemy was cloaked. The later flights took pictures in infrared, ultraviolet, radio waves, etc. Everything they showed was explainable. (There was one brief flurry of activity about an x-ray source, but then the astronomers said it was supposed to be there.) If there were anything there, they’d see it. If there were anything there they’d want to be seen, or at least glimpsed.

There was a deception, and General Eberhart was being played for a sap. Or was it worse, and he was plain old forgotten.

General Eberhart was angry. He sipped the coffee and got angrier.

Part 14

by TomM

As Mike looked through the folders one more time, he knew that there was something that had been overlooked. But where? He knew that the rednecks in custody were harmless, but he wasn't about to share that information with the military, not yet. Keep them guessing. There was a dead body in Oregon, and another in Massachusetts. The one in Massachusetts had no apparent connection with the situation, except for his murder itself. The partner of the Oregon body was in no shape to answer any qusetions. At least
not at the moment. Nothing to do there but wait for an opportunity.

No, his uneasiness must be with one of the witness statements. He carefully re-read each one. Most of them were just the original statements to the local poilice at the time of the incident. There were a few, however that had warrented follow-up interviews. He started to re-read the first of these. It was a woman who'd been in the Portland Starbucks when Fredricks was first apprehended. The follow-up was ordered because Fredricks had apparently approached and spoken to her.

He read the transcript of the second interview and the field agent's remarks. Apparently she'd never met him before and until his apprehension, was under the impression that he was an evangelist for some cult. She'd freely handed over the Bible he'd given her. (Other than the strange inscription, it had proved to be nothing more than a perfectly ordinary Bible.)

He was about to move on to the next folder when he noticed something in the survailance notes. Immediately after the field agent left her house she sent out an e-mail. The agency could not do much more than note its existence without violating her expectation of privacy. (Even that much was dicey, but in issues of national security sometimes it is necessary to risk a slap on the wrist. Most of the time no one ever even need know it happened.)

In itself, there was nothing. She was sending and recieving e-mail when the field agent arrived, and she just went back to what she had been doing. But there were two odd things about this particular message.

First was the encryption level. Most of the mail she had recieved was in cleartext, although some of the incoming and all of the outgoing messages were in a low level code used as the default encryption code by some ISPs when a secure transmission is requested. But the first message she sent out after the agent left was in a high level code the most secure encryption available to the public.

Second was the address. It included more than three times as many recipients as any of the earlier messages. And one of them was the dead body in Massachusetts.

Mike didn't trust coincidences.

Part 15

Just Because You're Paranoid Doesn't Mean They Aren't Out To Get You

by ScottN

d00d was worried.

OK, he was ALWAYS worried. In fact, had he ever visited a psychiatrist, he probably would have been diagnosed as clinically paranoid.

But this time, he actually had good reason. He was watching the front of the restaraunt, while John had been watching the back. Because of this, he had
seen the tail on Berry. John had missed it.

Back in the van, they started arguing about it.

"John, I'm tellin' ya, dude, they made him!"

"Yeah, OK, Dave, they made him, but they won't kill him. That would just be too obvious."

"I hope you're right, dude, but I think we need to get under cover."

At that moment, one of the police scanners activated. "1-Adam-12, shooting reported at 347 Elm Street. Paramedics are on the way."

"Dude, I *TOLD* you! That's Berry's address! They did him, and we're next!"

"Foobar! He must have been on to something. Now we've got to figure out what to do next... First thing, we've got to..."

Dave interrupted him. "We've got to hide! Then we need to figure out how to spread the word, because sure as h*ll they'll be lookin' to do us too!"

John thought for a few minutes. Then he said, "OK, Dave. Drive. Anywhere, just buy some time." Then he started typing frantically on his laptop.

About five minutes later, he hit the "Enter" key, and sat back. Dave was still driving. "OK Dave, I've written up everything we know about this,
encrypted it with my private key, and sent it out to FreeNet, along with a deadman switch.
If we don't post on alt.haxx0rs every 6 hours, someone will decrypt it and spread it around."

"Cool, John, but I still think we're in deep yogurt..."

Part 16

By Machiko Jenkins

I don't believe in coincidences.

So when I heard that William turned up dead in Massachusetts, I became suspicious. Very suspicious.

The follow up interview had been bizarre enough, but I had managed to hide the CD from the Bible before the field agent could take a look at the computers.

And then I annoyed him by putting in my Weird Al CD. And turning it up.

The CD that strange Bible thumper turned criminal had in his possession had been chock full of schematics, information, documents, and other files. Of course, I'd run everything through all of the virus scanners on my computer. And I knew that if the field agent knew I had this in my possession, I'd be hauled off like that Bible thumper. So I did the next best thing. I hauled out the CD burner, and made ten copies.

I put one in my safe deposit box at the bank. I mailed several out to various friends that I could trust. And then I sent a couple to the major networks.

And, just for thrills, I sent one to the White House.

I also made several other arrangements, like getting Mark a passport.
That was easy enough, and not too suspicious. We were, after all, honeymooning in Japan.

Then one day, the phone rang.

"Hello?" I answered, a bit breathlessly.

"Miss Jenkins? My name is Michael Smith. May I meet you somewhere for drinks?"

I frowned into the phone. "Who are you, and why should I agree?"
Darn, MJ, watch the tone. Let's make him suspicious, why don't you? I immediately squelched my sarcastic inner voice.

There was a silence on the other end. "If you would care to meet me at the Montmartre, Miss Jenkins, I can explain everything."

"And if I don't care to?"

"It is safer for you. Come alone." Michael hung up.

After a long debate with myself, I decided to take the bus downtown.
I can't parallel park, and Mark was out anyway. So I grabbed some cash, my license, and my debit card, and hopped onto the 12.

Upon reaching downtown, I head up to the Brasserie Montmartre. It's a cute French bistro style cafe. And it was dark enough outside that there was no question of my going in.

I was led to the far corner, where a blonde man stood and waited for me to sit. I sat down, and he sat as well. "I'll have a martini," he
told the waiter. I just asked for a water. The man stopped the waiter, though, and told him to bring me a Mexicana.

"The Montage has a drink called the Suffering B*stard," I said conversationally. "Stohli Oranj, orange juice, and something else. Appropriately named."

Michael raised a brow. "You made contact with a man in the Starbucks; he gave you a Bible."

I sighed. "Oh, are you one of them? Look, I gave you guys all the information I have."

Michael tossed a CD on the table between us. It was one of the CDs I had burned and sent to CNN. "I saw what's on there, girl. Come clean with me now, and there will be less trouble for you." He sat back as the waiter put the drinks on the table.

Time to plead ignorance. I just adopted a look of confusion. "You're threatening me with trouble about a thesis paper on why Socrates was reincarnated as Nostradamus, and then Nietzsche?"

"Miss Jenkins..."

"Look. I told you all that I know." I stood up abruptly. "Thanks for the drink, but no thanks." I walked out of the Montmartre.

That was my first mistake. My second was dismissing the bum as a bum.

I felt a prick in my arm. And then nothing.

Part 17

By JD

A (Waffling) Historian's Report

The conspiracy ran deep. There were branches in the highest levels of several of the larger governments on the wet rock called Earth. People began to run around like headless chickens, expressing deep confusion at
being kept out of the loop of information. The news organizations could offer little more than what people already knew, and for once, the governments didn't stupidly reveal or leak what was really going on in the
rattling craniums of the higher rulers.

The problem was, a great deal of the conspirators themselves didn't know exactly what was happening. Oh sure, some, relying on childish recollections, began to skulk around and relay nonsense messages to others, while believing that they knew what was going on more than their compatriots, but it was all mostly futile. A few knew the real answers, but they were so ashamed by all the domuffle and spook-games that they daren't reveal the truth for fear of ridicule and possible golf-membership revocation.

It was one of the finest examples of mankind's more complex stupidity. There was real danger, of course, but not everyone knew exactly where it was coming from. And if not for the efforts of a few individuals who
perhaps knew less than their fellow troglodytes, mankind would not be free to practice the same complex stupidity today. But back to the story.

Part 18

by Craig Rohloff

Tying up the loose ends. What tangled webs we weave. Three strikes and you're out. A number of corny cliches ran through Mike's head as he pondered the latest developments, but that last one didn't quite fit.
True, Agent Simon had messed up some time ago by getting involved too closely--too personally--in that messed up drug case. Strike one.
And then she had gotten pregnant--pregnant!--on top of that. Strike two.
Of course she shouldn't have even been able to get pregnant. There it was: strike three.
She was a bad field agent whose loyalties were severely in question, but up until now, one who was somebody else's problem.
But once again, "coincidence" seemed to be the order of the day. She had received an e-mail with the infamous crab aliens; whether by luck or by design was irrelevant, as was whether or not she even looked at it. She was in the loop.
Then she witnessed a clean-up in a mission that was supposed to confirm which team she was on. That had been a bad idea in the first place, since her loyalties were already in question. Someone's head would have to roll for that, but that wasn't Mike's concern at the moment. He had to tie down a loose cannon before she made any more trouble, by accident or by design. He pushed a buzzer on his desk.
A man entered, took the folder Mike handed him and read some of its contents aloud. "Marietta Simon, single, no kids," began the man.
Not for a few months yet, Mike thought wryly.
The man continued. "Parents deceased, no sibs. Doesn't look like anyone will miss her. Bring her in or sweep her up?"
Mike pondered that one. He wanted to just seal the hole, so to speak, but he couldn't help thinking that there may be something he'd need to extract from her first. That she'd gone on unsupervised for as long as she had was evidence that perhaps--perhaps--someone higher up was protecting her, or using her as bait to keep tabs on this whole operation. Mike wasn't about to let all of his hard work come crashing down.
Mike sighed. "Bring her in, but don't risk exposure. Do what you have to to keep her silent if things get out of hand. Just don't be so obvious about it this time."
The man left, and Mike turned his attention back to other matters, like what to do about the pair of hackers who still thought they had evaded him...